14
SCIENCE By James C. G. Conniff
You and i are paying plenty for a huge
machine which late next year will begin
probing the atom for nothing less than the
secret of life itself. If $30 million seems a lot
of tax money for one research tool, the
Atomic Energy Commission would like you
to view the picture this way: the outlay will
give our nation the biggest, most powerful
atom smasher on earth.
With a wallop 2 times greater than the
Russians' best, this machine consists of a
half-mile circular tunnel bigger than the
kind subway trains run through. Lined with
240 of the most precise electromagnets ever
built and buried under 12 feet of earth as
a radiation shield, this fantastic "gun" will
fire proton bullets into hydrogen atoms with
an energy totaling 25 billion electron volts.
With AEC approval, my son Dick and I
recently made a special behind-the-scenes
tour of Brookhaven National Laboratory on
Long Island (N.Y.), 70 miles from Broad
way, to see what our atomic research scien
tists are doing with machines like this.
BNL as they call this sprawling 6,500
acre tract of scrub pine and sand was a
particularly good choice. If science is on the
brink of forcing the ultimate portals any
where, it is here where nuclear studies are
geared far beyond the beyond. The payoff
on current experiments will be realized not
tomorrow or the day after, but in that un
foreseeable time sure to come when ion
and photon-powered ships explore deep
space at nearly the speed of light. In that
day also, nuclear medicine will have con
verted the menace of bombs and radiation
to a life-giving tool cf limitless potential.
Does that mean BNL and its select group
of sister labs pioneering in atomic research
are completely out of touch with the nuclear
achievements of the hour? Far from it BNL
and company made these achievements.
Furthermore, the radioisotopes and other ir
radiated materials which make possible our
war on cancer and other diseases as well
as provide improved steel, cigarettes, dish
washers, floor wax, and motor oil are all
produced under AEC licensing in these labs.
This is much more than an obvious boost
to medicine and industry. These achieve
ments also enable a place like Brookhaven
to help pay its own way. When you are into
the taxpayers for a plant worth upwards of
$80 million which costs $18 million a year
birthplace
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The author (left) and his son (center) are Model of research reactor shows ports and holes
briefed on Brookhaven' work by staff man. into which materials are inserted for studying.
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Family Weekly. Ma y 31, J9S9